GoKawiilTwo SpaceX alumni have a pitch to hyperscalers, and it has nothing to do with outer space: They’re building power plants here on Earth that cost less — and get built faster — than a natural gas power plant
Ambrosia Energy, which has been operating in stealth until now, hasn’t invented a new technology. Instead, it’s pairing solar panels with lithium-ion batteries to keep electrons flowing around the clock for $100 per megawatt-hour.
“A power plant should be able to be built at any scale in 12 months from contract signing to power on,” Sara Spangelo, co-founder and president of Ambrosia Energy, exclusively told TechCrunch. “Our ambition is to go to gigawatt scale.”
To bring costs down, the startup has been able to simplify the battery pack. Most grid-scale batteries cycle in two or four hours, a speed which puts more strain on the system. But Ambrosia trickle charges its batteries throughout the day and slowly discharges them at night.
Those changes, plus some other engineering refinements, has brought the cost for the entire package down to 1.5-times what the company pays for battery cells, less than the industry standard.
Ambrosia Energy started building its own power plant in West Texas earlier this year. Image Credits:Ambrosia Energy
If Ambrosia can deliver at scale, the startup could upend the energy world. Today, a new combined cycle gas turbine — the most efficient type — costs around $107 per megawatt-hour to build and operate, according to Lazard. That’s if you can get one — gas turbines currently have a five to seven year backlog.
“We’re also way more reliable than gas,” Spangelo said.
Spangelo and her co-founder, CEO Ben Longmier, previously worked on Starlink at SpaceX, which had acquired their startup, Swarm. Swarm had built a low-power, low-bandwidth network for internet of things (loT) devices using dozens of tiny satellites. Before that, Spangelo had worked at Google, and Longmier had worked at Apple and a handful of space-related startups.
The pair initially funded Ambrosia with their own money, but the startup recently took an investment from DFJ Growth. Spangelo declined to disclose the size of the investment.
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